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chapter three: take the fall, get hurt, act indignant!

tw(s): charlie bein' kinda annoying and OML BOMBAY'S IDIOT ERA BEING THE DEATH OF ME

— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —

THE BOYS CHEER and crowd around an abandoned box of Sports Illustrated magazines.

"Stand here and keep watch, Em," Averman says, stationing her in front of the box. "Unless you want one?"

"No, I think I'm good, Ave," Emma says, crossing her arms and staring down the alleyway. She huffs a breath of air into her mittens, chafing her hands together.

"First look's free, next five minutes cost a buck each," Karp announces.

Emma bites back a smile. She finds it funny how fascinated and obsessed boys are by the female body. But she understands that their eyes are deprived of beauty. Dicks are unfathomably ugly.

"Yeah, guys. Fork it over," Peter calls to them.

"Forget it, Karp. I can see this every day on MTV," Averman says, tossing his magazine back into the box.

"Yeah, and I can see this every day in the bathroom mirror. Will you pervs hurry up?" Emma groans, pulling her blue parka tighter around her. The cold wind whips at her frosty skin, and her lips are starting to get chapped.

"Hey, guys, this one's from Minneapolis. Hey, Guy, look, it's your mom!" Peter teases. The boys chase Peter into a corner for his tactless joke. 

Suddenly, an arm whips out in front of Karp's face, snatching the magazine. it's Larson and McGill. No Adam. Emma supposes he decided to listen to her after all.

"Hi, girls. Hey, gorgeous," Larson jeers, noticing her at the end of the alleyway.

"Does your mommy know you have that?"

"Nah, she's busy with the mailman."

"That'll make great bathroom reading," McGill remarks snidely.

"It's mine, you jerk, I found it!" Karp shouts.

"You don't even know what to do with it, wuss-breath!"

"You gonna let him call you 'wuss-breath?'" Peter asks in a low tone. He's always the instigator.

"No!" Karp growls, marching up to them.

There's a lot of aimless pushing and shoving, and Emma stands rigidly. She's never been a fan of aggression outside of hockey. 

A tall boy appears, saving her from having to perform any sort of physical defense. He comes almost out of thin air behind Larson and McGill. He picks them up by the collars of their coats and tosses them in a heap, right on top of Karp. Larson and McGill cower away from the boy and run out of the alley. They thank him, but are met with silence as the mysterious boy walks away.

— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —

"One, two, three, boom!" Karp leaps on the ice and falls face-first.

Emma hears a call of "If we're gonna cheat, we gotta make those falls look real!" She sighs in resignation. When she asked Bombay to take initiative, she didn't exactly mean "Teach us how to become lying scumbags." She shakes her head as she watch the sorry scene in front of her. 

"Come on, make it look real," Bombay says. "Act hurt!"

"I am hurt."

"Good, good. Now say it again."

"Take the fall! Act hurt! Get indignant!" 

Emma keeps her mouth shut. This is so beyond stupid.

"Good! You guys are ready."

Oh, good lord.

At the next game, Emma's teammates probably collapse about a thousand times. Some real, some fake. And it's getting them nowhere. 

"Goldberg! Don't take the fall when they're shooting at you!" Bombay reprimands.

"Oh! Well, I guess you didn't explain that very well, did you?"

"He's out there, tumbling around on the ice because you told him to, coach! You're not even entitled to any sort of annoyance at this point. And to think that just the other day, you were complaining about us looking like idiots," Emma points out.

The ref skates over.

"District five! Cut the acting class. One more dive, I forfeit to the Jets!"

"What? I'm insulted by that!"

Bombay watches as a group of opposing players surround Charlie and push him into the boards, jostling him around. Emma is watching from next to her coach, chewing on the rubber spout of her water bottle. Gross, but she really needs something to do.

"Charlie!" Bombay calls, hands cupping his mouth. "That guy is twice your size. So next time he gets you in a corner like that, I want you to grab your eye like it's cut and then hit the ice! Got it?"

Charlie looks at him scornfully. Emma almost reaches out and hugs him, but then she remembers that he's not sweet Averman, or Jesse, or Peter, or Adam, so he would go ballistic.

Charlie looks at her and kind of wishes she would hug him. Wait, what? No, he doesn't. Ridiculous.

Charlie gets back on the ice, flustered from his out-of-the-ordinary thought, and gets caught in the same situation. Bombay nods in approval and stares at Charlie expectantly.

Charlie mulls his options around in his head. If he does what Bombay wants him to do, they could win, according to him. But if he does it, Emma will sigh and walk away with a look of disappointment on her face. What? Damn it, Charlie, why the hell do you care what she thinks? He tells himself he cares because Emma is the type of person to have a good opinion of everybody, so if she thinks you're a bad person, you know you've lost in life.

"That's it, Charlie!" Bombay yells. 

A coach yelling "That's it!" when his player's cornered and practically being beat up by a bunch of other boys is probably the most obvious sign of cheating or some suspicious activity. The ref's stupid for not picking up on it. 

Emma watches as Charlie kicks the puck out from under one of the guys' legs, trying to salvage the situation.

"Damn it, Charlie!"

They file into the locker rooms, angry and frustrated.

"We can't even win when we cheat!" Jesse laments. "Stupid cake-eater tricks. Damn rich people. No offense, Em."

She nods in acknowledgement. 

Like Charlie said to her before, Emma lives on the rich side of the district because her mother is a lawyer at a prestigious firm. Even though she knows very well that she is wealthy, sometimes she wishes Charlie wouldn't say it like it makes her a terrible person. Her mom actually didn't come from much, and she worked really hard to get where she is, and still does. With absolutely no help from Emma's father.

Her mom is strong, smart, and a rule-follower, so she stays in her firm's good graces. She can't say the same for other people at the firm. At her workplace, there was a man recently, her mother said, that was an amazing lawyer, but was suspended from his job because of a DUI, and he had to perform community service now.

"That was embarrassing," Connie spits.

Emma smiles apologetically at her.

Bombay comes barging into the room after Charlie.

"Charlie! What the hell is the matter with you? When I tell you to do something, you do it! Got it?" This man is making it so difficult to take him seriously. If the room wasn't so tense, she'd burst out laughing.

Charlie stays silent and keeps his head down.

"Look at me. You got it?"

"You can't make me cheat." Just then, Charlie's face looks so filled with hatred and disdain. He storms out of the room. Emma holds herself back from cheering for him.

Mr. Hall enters and drags Jesse and Terry out as well.

"This is what I gave up my overtime pay for? To see my kids takin' falls?"

Karp storms out.

Then Emma. She hoists her duffel bag over her shoulder.

"Emma Mitchell-Hart! Get back here!" Bombay yells.

"Jesus, coach, only my mom's allowed to do that full-name thing," she says. Then she mumbles, "And it's just Emma Hart. The Mitchell part of it ran out on me a long time ago."

Emma wasn't expecting those words to come out of her mouth. She never confronts the issue so frankly. She usually just seethes inside and outwardly pretends like it doesn't exist. Like her dad doesn't exist.

Emma ponders why she always seems to care about people who clearly don't love her back. Her father, for one. And maybe Charlie. But there's still a stark difference between him and Charlie. Her dad would have willingly cheated. Well, he has before. But Charlie, on the other hand, the fact that he didn't follow coach's instructions shows that he's moral and kind and not afraid to stand up to authority to do what's right. And Emma admires that. She thinks that maybe she likes Charlie because he's everything her dad isn't.

— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —

A day later, Bombay gathers the team back together on account of Charlie's willingness to try again. According to Charlie, Bombay apologized. Emma gives her coach a knowing look, as if to say, Did you really? 

On a very positive note, Bombay convinced a man named Mr. Ducksworth to give the team some money for supplies. Interestingly enough, Mr. Ducksworth is Emma's mom's boss. She's starting to think that Bombay is the man that her mother was talking about, the one who got the DUI. That would explain why he is literally being forced by the state of Minnesota to coach them. She's going to sit on that secret for a while until she needs to use it against him.

Coach takes them to a sports equipment shop. Emma is looking at a pair of skates when Charlie picks out a hockey stick from the organizer next to her, causing the whole display to fall down. Hans' head whips in Charlie's direction.

"Oh, whoops," Emma says. "My bad. Sorry." Charlie nods at her silently in thanks for covering for him. That might be the nicest thing he's ever done to her. He's never fully acknowledged how nice she is to him, so the recognition sends a spark of warmth to her heart.

Emma's cheeks turn red, and Charlie notices this, scrunching his nose. He hopes she doesn't think he's trying to be friendly or anything.

"Who is that kid?" Bombay asks, noticing the tall, mysterious kid at the front of the shop.

"Fulton Reed," Guy answers. "He's in one of my classes."

"How come he's not on the team?" Bombay questions.

"He only plays football," Jesse explains. "Some preppy school gave him a scholarship as long as he doesn't play hockey. They don't want him gettin' hurt."

"I heard it was colleges," Guy says in admiration. "He's already been accepted to four of 'em."

"Yeah, but I heard he's gotta repeat the sixth grade," Goldberg chimes in.

"If you didn't have to repeat sixth grade, I'm sure he's just fine," Emma says. Goldberg glares at her, offended.

The team arrives at the ice skating rink after their shopping spree to find several individual figure skaters practicing various moves.

"Dude, check 'em out, man," Goldberg says.

"Holy cow."

"They're pretty good skaters."

"Yeah," Emma agrees. "Really good. Look at that camel spin she's doing." Emma points to a young brunette at the center of the ice.

"Hey, Emma, didn't you used to do figure skating for a few years?" Charlie asks.

"Uh, yeah. When I was like, nine. Have you been stalking me, Char?"

"What? No! Ew. Gross," Charlie bursts out, furrowing his brows.

"Anybody know who they are?" Bombay wonders.

"That's Tommy Duncan. He's in my science class," Terry says.

"And that's his sister, Tammy," Emma adds. "I used to be on a team with her."

"You think they'd wanna play hockey with us?"

They all hoot in agreement.

"Go get dressed. I'll do the negotiating."

— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —

"Back to basics! Skating!" Now this was a piece of cake. The team shuffles through a line of cones, cradling invisible pucks. Bombay yells adjustments. He's doing pretty well at coaching now. This could have happened earlier if he'd listened to Emma instead of having to figure out by himself that he was a massive problem.

"Keep your balance, Karp! Trust your edges!"

Charlie, who's behind Emma, trips and takes a fall. She lets out a yelp as her ankle turns and she lands with a thud on her back.

"Aw, jeez," she groans, blinking her eyes open. She's met with Charlie's extremely flushed face. Super close to hers. The tips of her ears heat up.

"Sorry," he whispers, getting up. As an afterthought, he lends Emma his hand and she takes it gratefully. This moment is pure butterfly food. Her stomach twists.

Next, coach makes them do a drill. With eggs.

"Soft hands. You don't shoot the puck to your teammate. You sail it to them. Karp, on your feet."

Bombay places the egg in front of his stick.

"You send it." He passes it to Karp, who keeps his stick unmoving. The egg cracks and the yolk oozes out onto the ice. Ew.

"You don't stop the pass. You accept it. Cradle it."

The next minute is filled with a couple of cracked eggs, and few triumphs. Bombay passes the egg to Charlie, who receives it successfully. When he attempts to send it back, however, it cracks all over Bombay's shirt. Charlie looks down, embarrassed.

"It's okay, Charlie. You did a good job receiving it," Emma says, patting his shoulder with her gloved hand.

"Yeah, yeah, I know that. Who asked you, anyway?" he says, shrugging her hand away.

"Right. Sorry." 

When practice ends, Charlie skates in front of Emma.

"Sorry about the little incident at the beginning of practice." His face turns a little bit redder. "But, uh, it was a good practice. You're not bad at this."

Okay, hold up. Didn't he just throw a fit over me complimenting his receiving? This bitch needs to make up his mind, Emma thinks. 

Emma wants to make a snarky comment about this or how praise doesn't mean much coming from Charlie Spazway himself, but the truth is, praise from Charlie Spazway himself means the world and more to her.

"Thanks, Char. You too. Well, see ya." She waves to him before collecting her belongings and heading home.

Maybe things are turning around.

— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —

CLARA'S CORNER

okayyy charlie kind of needs to sort his shit out, because his emotions are 📈📉. he can't drag poor emma along on a string.

i really apologize if this is bad, i'm not an experience romance writer, but i still hope you enjoy.

going through these chapters like a wildfire and editing them every time i remember something i want to add